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“...Calanthe was taken aback when he returned to sit close and bathe her dusty, tear-stained face with a scrap of his tunic, but it felt far too wonderful to interrupt with curious questions. When he finished with her face and neck, he handed her the waterskin and left to rinse out the cloth. After wetting her dry throat, she closed her eyes, waiting for his soothing ministrations to resume.”
Caleb swallows before he continues, wetting his own throat and flickering his gaze up momentarily towards his captive audience of one, where he lies draped over a chair like he’s never quite figured out how to use one and no one ever bothered to teach him how to do it correctly. The worst part, Caleb thinks, is how he still manages to look effortlessly elegant in what should be an altogether inelegant sprawl. His scarlet eyes are heavy-lidded, watching Caleb with a quiet, intense focus that does not waver.
Caleb has to take a deep breath, a moment to gather the strength of will to forge onward.
“‘Uh, Calanthe?’ She opened her eyes to find Thorkan grinning down at her. He handed her the scrap of roughspun wool, motioning at the scoop of her bodice. ‘Perhaps you better do the rest yourself.’”
“‘Chicken?’ she asked with an alluring smile.’”
His accent trips clumsily over the already clumsy dialogue, and he point-blank refused at the start to “do the voices” as Mollymauk urged him to, but still the tiefling is a quiet and attentive listener. Caleb shifts a bit where he sits on the hard wooden floor, legs splayed awkwardly out before him. His sprawl is not so aesthetically artless as Mollymauk’s is, and he is not quite drunk enough to be completely loose-limbed and comfortable, though he is clearly tipsy enough to agree to this ridiculous game in the first place.
He wets his lips for what feels like the hundredth time (surely his mouth is moist enough at this point, but every time his eyes flicker up anxiously and catch that red, red stare, his tongue glues itself to the roof of his mouth yet again) and turns the page.
“‘You sound and look like you feel much better,’ he said wryly. “But in answer to your question, yes, I’m chicken. Because I know if I touch you there, I won’t stop until I’ve touched you everywhere…’
Calanthe plucked open the topmost laces on her bodice. ‘And I wouldn’t let you stop… not this time... ”
The wizard’s eyes widen slightly, and he clears his throat awkwardly. “And then she, eh, seductively wipes the dust from her bosoms, I guess.”
“Oooh, scandalous,” Molly offers dryly, leaning his cheek on his fist. His gaze is near-glowing in the dim light cast by the oil lantern at Caleb’s shoulder. But he’s still smiling that damned devil’s smile.
Caleb’s cheeks grow warm. “Oh, no, it is rather tame, comparatively. She turns away so he can’t see her, but when she gives him back the cloth it is warm from the heat of her skin , which is arousing, I suppose?
“I bet it’s about to get good,” Mollymauk says with a wicked grin. “Keep going!”
Caleb closes the book, but he keeps his thumb between the pages, and gives the tiefling a pained look. “Do I truly need to? I feel these books are all the same. Insert the, ah, tab into the slot and bada-boom , there are uncomfortably aggressive orgasms for three pages after!”
“But I’m invested now,” Mollymauk whines, shifting forward and sort-of upright to lean in. His eyes widen, his lower lip pokes out in a petulant pout. “You can’t stop now, not when we’re so close to the juicy bits!” He tries to keep his expression longing, theatrically tragic (and honestly, he should be the one reading this, with all his dramatic flair— but he had flatly told Caleb he doesn’t really “do the reading thing” and looked just vaguely vulnerable in spite of attempts to be flippant, so that was that was that) but he can’t quite keep his mouth from twitching up at the corners, the impish light from his eyes. “Have you ever seen purple balls turn blue, Mister Caleb?”
Caleb feels a blush crawling its way up his neck and he sinks down turtle-like into the collar of his coat to hide it. “I… cannot say that I have, no.”
Mollymauk raises his eyebrows challengingly, and finally, Caleb sighs gustily and opens the book again, hunching down more comfortably. “Shall I skip ahead, then?” he asks dryly, “since you are in such dire straits?”
Mollymauk twists around in the chair with a shocking amount of catlike flexibility, until he is looking at Caleb upside-down, the ornaments hanging from his horns and tangling into the deep violet tendrils of his hair like little golden stars against a velvety night sky. “Please do,” he purrs.
Caleb looks down at the book as quickly as he can, steeling himself against the gaze he can feel though he is no longer looking at it directly.
“‘Calanthe? Are you all right?’ Thorkan knelt down on one knee, and lifted her chin.
She inhaled his essence: horse, leather, the wilderness, and his own special male aroma. Blindfolded, she could pick him out of a row of a hundred men.
“‘Love me, Thorkan.’”
Screwing his face up in mild disgust, Caleb can’t help the way his ears burn at Mollymauk’s loud, throaty laugh of delight. At the terrible writing? At Caleb’s discomfort? He can’t quite be sure. But he braves the ridicule and pushes on determinedly.
Calanthe’s small hands charted the breadth of his muscular chest and found the open vee of his tunic. Her breasts tingled and swelled with the desire to know the sensation of his hair against them.
Mollymauk’s resulting cackle shocks Caleb out of his already-shocked state, and he looks up with his mouth open wide. “That’s not how it works !” the tiefling crows delightedly.
“There is so much awful, awful dialogue, Mollymauk,” Caleb groans, hunching over as if he is in pain. And to some degree, he almost is. He has read hundreds upon hundreds of books by this point, including more than a few smutty ones, many of them of varying quality. But those have always been quick skimming reads, meant to absorb the information as quickly as possible, even if the "information" involved copious talk of dewy bosoms and eager manhoods. Never has he had to perform the atrocious literature he privately sniggered over and then put aside aloud. But Mollymauk does excel at dragging him into new experiences, doesn’t he?
“Then skip to the good bits!” the tiefling scoffs.
“There are no good bits!” Caleb protests.
“Then just skip to the saucy bits!”
He drags his free hand down his face and grumbles in Zemnian under his breath, trying not to track the delighted, catlike arc of Mollymauk’s spade-tipped tail swishing about behind him.
"Very slowly, Thorkan’s hands caressed the insides of her firm silky thighs. His intimate touch fanned Calanthe’s passion, and she quivered deliciously.
Thorkan rose and stepped back to view her body in its beautiful entirety. With a purely animal growl, he embraced her. Cradling her head in one hand and cupping her naked buttock in the other, he took her mouth.
His tongue thrust in and out in a primitive imitation of what was soon to come. Calanthe’s tongue boldly parried his, while instinctively grinding her hips against him.
Growing more and more flustered and hating it, Caleb looks up, and Mollymauk leers, making a twirling motion with his fingers, as if to say “get a move on.” Taking a shuddering breath, Caleb obliges.
“Caught up in passion’s inescapable current, Calanthe sunk to her knees. Feverishly, she removed his boots and then reached to unfasten his trousers. Between her nervous unfamiliarity and the tautness of the material, it wasn’t easy releasing the buttons, but she finally managed it.
Unrestrained, his proud manhood leaped out at her. Calanthe almost jumped. She tried not to stare, but curiosity won out. In the wake of her innocence, however, fear cooled her passion. Before she could stop them, the words slipped out of her mouth. ‘Goodness! Will it fit?’”
Mollymauk snorts inelegantly, and when Caleb looks up, giving him a stern look (most likely undermined in its effectiveness by the ruddy flush suffusing his pale face) he smiles broadly and pinches his lips dutifully shut.
Caleb, reluctantly, continues, cringing more and more the further he is forced to read by Mollymauk’s impishly expectant stare.
“With a feral growl, he buried his face in her sweet-smelling hair and began moving slowly in and out of her buttery warmth. But when Calanthe, with her innate sensuality, wrapped her legs through his and matched his rhythm, Thorkan lost all control.
Mating instincts as old as time drove them on. Harder and harder, he thrust into her gyrating body. His sweat mingled with hers, slicking their bodies as they slid over one another.
Calanthe’s head shook from side to side in the frantic race to ecstacy’s door. Then, a gripping sensation gathered like a tight coil within her, finally exploding in earth-shattering paroxysms of excruciating pleasure.
The walls of her soft warmth flexed and squeezed Thorkan’s manhood. He cried out her name, thrusting deeper as his hot seed spewed inside her. Then he collapsed in exhaustion, his large body covering hers.”
“Urgh,” Caleb grumbles, closing the book. “Is that enough? I feel... dirty.” He truly meant what he said earlier, about uncomfortably violent literary orgasms. His own… forays into the realms of the carnal pleasures have been sparse, at best, and still the idea of an orgasm ripping, tearing, rending, or barrelling through him in any manner seems… as unpleasant as it is unlikely.
“Well, is that all that happens?” Molly asks, and somehow, since he vacated his sinuous, half-hearted perch upon the chair, he has sidled his way across the floor enough to wrap his too-hot fingers around Caleb’s bony ankle, right around the slip of pale, bare skin between the top of his thick woollen socks and below the ragged cuff of his too-short sleep trousers.
Caleb makes a vague, slightly disgusted noise. “Oh, no, certainly not.” He cracks the book open again, thumbing through the pages. “There are easily a half dozen more, er, raunchy scenes, and they are all equally terrible. There are many uncomfortable euphemisms, interspersed with a barely parsible plotline that relies almost entirely on racially charged stereotypes, misogyny, and assault. It is not only the bad writing and uncomfortable sex scenes that make it so terrible.” He holds the book up by one side and lets it flop open, squinting at the pages. “Truly, I do not know who in their right mind would waste their money on such, eh, pferdescheiße .”
Molly throws back his head and laughs, rich and husky, and the ornaments on his horns clink brightly together with the graceful arc of his throat. He is still holding Caleb’s ankle, and the contact burns in a way that is as intoxicating as it is terrifying. “How much did you buy it for again?” he asks teasingly, his eyes crinkling at the corners when he once again levels the helpless wizard with his thousand-watt smile.
Caleb turns his eyes down and chuffs out a rough, coughing chuckle. “I said in their right mind .”
Mollymauk pats his ankle, and takes his hand away at last, and the bare skin prickles immediately with gooseflesh at the sudden chill left behind in the wake of the tiefling’s burning-hot touch. “I suppose that’s enough for now,” he finally acquiesces, and Caleb cannot help his deep and heartfelt sigh of relief. He claps the book shut with a definitive snap and all but flings it across the room, where it bounces off the rumpled coverlet of the unmade bed and thunks onto the floor out of sight on the opposite side. He looks to Mollymauk, quietly pleased that the ordeal is over, but also a little… not sad , per se, but… dissatisfied somehow. As uncomfortable as it was to read such things aloud to anyone, and especially to Mollymauk, with his flashing eyes and knowing smiles, it was still… fun. Fun in a simple, easy way that has left him quietly pleased, sort of whole-body floating on good feelings rather than a mess of anxiety and self-hatred. Mollymauk knows so much about him now, of his past and himself and the half-charred scattered thoughts rattling about in his broken brain, and still, still comes to him whenever they have down time, still willingly spends time with him, teases him and draws him out of himself, as if nothing has changed between them since the weeks, months , following their first fateful meeting.
In many ways, nothing has. In others, everything has.
“I suppose you would like to go back to your room now?” he offers quietly, evenly, trying not to let his disappointment show. They’ve done this dance before, several times. Drunk on too much liquor, and too many close calls, too many barely-there touches and long, soft looks. Caleb could go the rest of his life without another drop of alcohol, and if Mollymauk were near, he’d still feel endlessly off-balance, dizzy and drunk, head full of fluff and nonsense that never fails to coax a smile from his hard, grim mouth.
“Now, now, Mister Caleb,” Mollymauk chides, and he rolls smoothly to his feet, his lean body swaying just slightly, “you won’t get rid of me that easily. We’ve still got much to discuss.” His smile slices across his sharp face like the edge of his Summer’s Dance, dazzlingly bright and just as dangerous. He laces his fingers together and stretches them high above his head, his eyes squinting like a pleased cat as he stretches his long, lean body to the right, then the left, his spine popping a few times in quick succession. “Call it a bit of a book club. Now we talk about the deeper meaning of the literature, how it made us feel . Rubbish like that.” He drops his arms, and Caleb looks away quickly and guiltilty when the hem of his oversized (most likely “borrowed” from one of their companions) shirt falls to once more cover the colorful whorls of ink twisting down the fragile arcs of his hip bones.
Schei ße , his mouth is dry again. Mollymauk’s eyes are burning into him when he looks up, his smile gentler, but no less wicked, no less knowing for its delicate feline curl. “The—” he wets his lips again, chews absently on the lower one, wonders how dry and cracked they would feel to someone else, and then quickly banishes that thought before it can take root. “The deeper meaning of the book is the author is an incredibly repressed human woman, most likely upper class, who fetishizes and hypersexualizes beings outside her realm of influence, and seeks thrills she cannot find in her own unsatisfying home life by writing sensationalized sexual fantasies. And also she does not have an editor to tell her no.”
“Oh, darling, keep talking dirty to me,” Molly croons, and he flings himself onto the bed, draping his body across it with his characteristic disdain for the proper use of furniture. He wiggles a bit, suddenly ungainly, and Caleb’s throat constricts at the strip of inked purple skin yet again exposed by the oversized linen shirt inching up over his navel. The heat in Caleb’s cheeks returns full force, licking down his neck, burning his ears, and he feels every fraction of a second tick by until Mollymauk decides he is comfortable, the way his eyes track the meandering length of the tiefling’s body without his brain’s input.
There is a natural, inborn charisma to Molly’s figure, the way he moves his body with purpose and grace no matter what he is doing. The measure of his long stride, the carriage of his shoulders, the cocky angle of his head to the sly tilt of his mouth to the mischievous twinkle of his carmine eyes.
“Not for nothing, Mister Caleb, but the last time someone looked at me like that, I got laid.”
And then he opens his fucking mouth. Caleb closes his eyes, suitably shamed, and huffs out a low chuckle. “Ah,” he mumbles, eyes still closed, trying to will away the heat churning in his gut and making his skin feel too tight, like it’s going to split and crackle and flake away. “ Es tut mir leid, Mollymauk.”
For a long moment, he does not respond. Caleb can hear him, shifting about on the bed, the rustle of the fine bedclothes, the creak of the wooden frame. He keeps his eyes closed, so he does not have to see whatever Mollymauk’s sharp, shrewd, endlessly knowing gaze has discovered in him.
When Mollymauk speaks, his voice is barely a whisper, but it echoes in the hollow of Caleb’s chest. “Open your eyes, Caleb.”
He hesitates for all of a second, before a too-warm hand one his cheek makes him gasp faintly in surprise. Mollymauk is there, and he is terribly close, and staring at him with eyes that see far, far too much. He wants to close his own eyes again, just so he does not have to feel so pinned and pulled apart and known .
But he doesn‘t. And he can’t be sure if it is because Mollymauk didn’t ask him to, or if he is simply mesmerized by the creature before him, standing in his space, breathing his air. He can feel the warmth radiating from the tiefling’s body, and suddenly he has never felt colder in his life, aching to lean into the hearthfire heat of Molly’s chest. Before he can stop himself, he sways forward, just slightly, and the dizzy-drunk feeling returns, and quick as a flash, there is Mollymauk’s other hand, long fingers curling around Caleb’s wrist and squeezing.
Caleb freezes, and Molly smiles. Still too sharp, too knowing, but softer somehow. It cants up a little more on one side than the other, baring one too-sharp canine. Caleb is suddenly and breathlessly reminded of how many dreams he's woken from, gasping and sweaty and panicked not from his usual gamut of horrid night terrors, but from foggy afterimages of those teeth digging into his skin and leaving the ghosts of their sting that linger long into his waking hours. His heart thuds hard in his chest, his eyes flickering desperately away from Mollymauk's infuriatingly unreadable expression, only to be drawn back helplessly a mere few seconds later, unable to resist.
His dark, forked tongue flickers out and that is where Caleb's traitorous gaze sees fit to rest, on that damnable devil's tongue he hears whispering in ragged Infernal whenever he closes his eyes. There one moment, gone the next, and yet he can't stop thinking about it, feels dizzy with the tension between them, and scheiße, he's been quiet for too long—
It's as if he is under some sort of spell when he sways forward, like there's an invisible string tight around his throat tugging him and he is powerless to resist the pull. He is so flushed with sudden adrenaline and anxiety and desperate, sickening want he's spent so long shoving to the deepest, darkest parts of him— because who could look at a filthy, scarred, murderous monster with anything but pity or disdain— that his mouth lands wildly shy of its mark and smashes a bit messily against Mollymauk's sharp cheekbone.
He hovers there, still as a corpse, for a moment that hardly lasts a breath but somehow feels like ages, before pulling back as if burned (not by the fiendfyre heat of Molly's skin, but by his disgust with his own behavior) and spewing a frantic tangle of apologies in every language he can possibly grasp. And then he is left there staring silently at the floor as he awaits whatever punishment Mollymauk sees fit to bestow for his daring to break every social rule he twists around himself to keep his companions (his friends, he can’t help but think, weak because he’s broken so many of his own rules already, his family… ) at arm’s length so they do not see just how much of a broken mess he really is.
Molly makes a sound, then, rough and rumbling, and for a moment, Caleb’s traitorous heart feels as if it stops cold, his ribs freezing and cracking around it, before his brain catches up and realizes it is a laugh.
Mollymauk is laughing .
Caleb cannot bear to look up, so he closes his eyes instead, as that is his only defense in this moment when he feels the warm little world they’ve created in locked rooms after dangerous adventures shaking apart and crumbling around him. He almost wishes the tiefling would hit him, shout at him, shove him away. He has been on the receiving end of Molly’s mockery the same as the rest of them, but it was never cruel, always fond. The way loved ones gently needle. The way Jester gossips about who likes who without a care for anyone’s privacy (not that any of them really have it, the way they live in each others’ pockets), the way Fjord and Beau always seem a second away from coming to blows one moment and spilling deep personal truths to one another the next, the way Veth can’t help but heckle basically everyone she encounters and then still climbs them to lick her thumb and wipe a smudge of dirt from their cheeks, how Yasha casually throws her weight around when anyone gets attitude with her as if she is not the gentlest among them though she could crush each and every one of them as easily as she blinks, and the way Caduceus quietly judges and gently sasses them all into taking care of themselves as if they’re incapable of remembering on their own (which, to be fair, they often are.)
Caleb can’t bear the thought of Molly not only rejecting him entirely (which he expected, of course, and it is why he never dared bridge the gap up to this point) but mocking his efforts to seek an intimacy that is unwelcome, even, perhaps, repulsive , and burn whatever tentative connection they’ve built up to the ground.
“Caleb, dear,” Molly chuckles, and Caleb doesn’t realize he’s trembling until he stills at the touch of hot, hot fingers against his cheek. “Caleb, look at me, please?” His voice is soft, soothing, but there is an edge of mirth to it that still stings, a dull and venomous little twinge. Reluctantly, but obediently, Caleb looks up, startled to find that Mollymauk is suddenly little more than a watery smudge of purple in the vague shape of a tiefling. More fingers join the ones on his face, brushing away the wetness they find. “There we are, ah,” Molly croons, “look at you. Feeling better?”
“No,” Caleb says miserably, his temples beginning to throb with a mix of confusion, embarrassment, and stupid, spiteful hope . “Not at all.”
Molly barks out another laugh, his hands dancing gracefully along Caleb’s jawline to curl gently around the back of his neck. That imaginary string grows tighter around his throat, and he can hardly draw a breath. “Calm down, Caleb,” he coos, twirling the loose, rusty hair at his nape around long fingers. “Come on, deep breaths.” He inhales, as if to demonstrate, and then exhales, and does it again, and again, until Caleb begins to mimic him. Slowly, he can feel himself start to unwind, the knot in his stomach loosening, the sweat at the small of his back cooling. “There, now isn’t that better?” Molly teases.
It doesn’t seem mocking, now, and Caleb can only nod once mutely, though his head feels stuffed full of cotton, too light and strange and fuzzy in the slow comedown from near-blind panic.
“Good, good. Now, would you like to try that again?”
Caleb’s breath stutters in his lungs, and he freezes again like a frightened rabbit. “ Was? ”
Molly is still smiling, still playing with his hair, as if he is completely unaware that he has entirely broken the wizard’s brain— and if he is aware, he’s maybe a little pleased by it. “The kiss, Mr. Widogast, do keep up. You missed. Want to try again?”
When Caleb only stares at him, wide-eyed, his head a jumble of questions that are more incoherent sounds than thoughts, Molly scoffs. His fingers are so hot when they tickle along the rough stubble on Caleb's jaw, so hot they feel they have to leave a mark, like there's no way they won't brand his skin. But they don't. They curl, and cradle, and tilt his head back, and then Molly's lips are pressing to his and oh, oh—
Caleb Widogast thought he knew what fire felt like before, but the way it scorches his fingers when he summons it from the well of rage, and pain, and guilt churning in the mire of his heart feels like a guttering candle, the short-lived warmth of dripping wax clinging to his fingers in comparison to this . This all-encompassing wildfire heat that bursts in his stomach and races to every limb, awoken by the infernal burn of Mollymauk's smirking mouth against his own. The tiefling chuckles again, low and pleased, and the fact that Caleb can feel it so intimately almost punches him in the stomach with the force of his desperate, long-ignored want . He reaches out, hesitates and draws back, but those sharp teeth nip his bottom lip, and he claws at Molly’s chest, hands twisting in his shirt because he needs something to anchor himself or he’ll fall over in a dead faint, he’s sure of it. His mouth drops open enough to let a reedy little sound of confusion escape, and it is quickly chased back in by the prongs of that forked tongue.
Caleb’s knees buckle, and it is only Mollymauk’s quick reflexes that keep him from toppling, an arm around his waist guiding him over to the bed to sit down heavily on the overstuffed mattress. Molly pulls back, eyes bright and dancing, head cocked. “You seemed to enjoy that,” he teases, brushing back Caleb’s hair again, twining a few coppery strands around his fingers.
Caleb blinks dumbly at him, mouth slack. He closes it for a moment, then opens it again, but no words come out. Only a pitifully garbled noise that might have been words at one point, before the infuriating tiefling rattled his brain around in his skull with something so simple as a kiss.
A very nice kiss, a little voice in his head supplies helpfully. It sounds, unfortunately, a bit like Jester. One you’ve been wanting for ages. His face scrunches, and he shakes his head, before attempting to look up at Mollymauk again, who is still watching him with twinkling eyes and a little smirk that only grows the longer Caleb goes without speaking. Finally, he swallows hard, and when he opens his mouth, he actually manages to form words. “Stop smirking at me like that.”
“Like what?” Molly asks innocently, his smirk only growing. Caleb’s ears feel hot, but then, so does all of him, and he has to look away. “Oh, don’t pout, Caleb,” the tiefling wheedles, and Caleb is suddenly very aware that there are still hands around his waist, burning his skin through his thin shirt. “I’m just glad you finally did something about all the looking.”
Caleb’s spine snaps straight, skin prickling. Molly’s gaze is unflinchingly shrewd.
“Oh, don’t be like that. We’ve been dancing around each other for long enough, don’t you think?” He squeezes Caleb’s waist, thumbs rubbing circles in his hip bones, and snorts. “Everyone else is certainly sick of it.”
The idea that the rest of their little crew are somehow aware enough of Caleb’s fixation with the smug tiefling is both more than a little likely, and also absolutely mortifying . His cheeks flame hotter, and when he opens his mouth, nothing comes out. He doesn’t really need to, he thinks. His choked silence is damning enough.
Mollymauk doesn’t press him any further. He does, however, quietly offer an out for him, if he wants it. “We don’t have to stop dancing,” he says, voice uncharacteristically soft. “At least, not yet.” He’s smiling, but it’s not mocking. It is, in fact, terribly kind , and he touches Caleb’s cheek and leaves a spark in his wake. Caleb’s eyelids flutter helplessly, He hesitates for a breathless moment, trying to find the words, the wherewithal to say something, and Molly smiles again, even softer, and Caleb’s heart shudders and clenches in his chest when the tiefling makes to rock to his feet. Caleb grabs his shirt before he can go, drags him close, and kisses him again, like the first, but with slightly better aim.
And this time, it seems, that Caleb has surprised Mollymauk.
When he pulls back, breathless and trembling, with a rough whisper of, “I have never been a very good dancer,” (which sounded much more suave in his head) Mollymauk looks a bit dazed.
But that only lasts so long before he recovers, nimble as always, his wet, reddened mouth kicking up yet again, mischief and mirth, and Caleb reaches for him without thinking, his brain ever-so-cleverly shutting off anything but whatever controls the grasping, desperate need to kiss the tiefling again, to have him close, to let him burn away the cracked and crumbling coals in the wizard’s chest and leave him something gentler than the wildfire he wrangles beneath his skin day after day.
Mollymauk wraps him up in the circle of his arms, bends and mouths along his jaw, and laughs huskily against his ear, his fingers dancing down Caleb’s shuddering spine. “Don’t worry,” he says, so syrupy-sweet it would almost sound condescending if Caleb did not know him so well (well, it still is, because it’s Mollymauk, but Caleb finds it rather attractive, so he supposes there’s no harm done), “I’m happy to lead.”